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Ariela
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26 Dec 2010, 4:07 am

Anyone resent that upon assessing someone, professionals look at your diagnosis rather than you as an individual or your situation?



wavefreak58
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26 Dec 2010, 8:57 am

Ariela wrote:
Anyone resent that upon assessing someone, professionals look at your diagnosis rather than you as an individual or your situation?


The point of a diagnosis is to give a professional a frame of reference. It defines the core issues facing a person and informs treatment plans. Any competent professional will use the DX as a starting point, looking towards and individual's specific issues to develop appropriate treatment.


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nissa_amas_katoj
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26 Dec 2010, 11:39 am

My therapist seems to have accepted my diagnosis second-hand and it has given him some odd and incorrect ideas about me. He seems to think I am helpless in certain situations in which I am, in fact, quite competent. When I attempted to correct this impression he told me I wasn't being realistic.

Since this whole area is in any case not relevant to the reason I am dealing with this therapist, I have decided not to challenge his false impressions in this area.


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Wallourdes
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26 Dec 2010, 4:33 pm

Ariela wrote:
Anyone resent that upon assessing someone, professionals look at your diagnosis rather than you as an individual or your situation?


It is the well-known, frequently made mistake in psychiatry since the sixties, matching-up behaviour and diagnostics which makes unreliable conclusions (link - the part on the Rosenhan experiment).
As warned in the DSM, the text set in bold.

Quote:
Cautions

The DSM-IV-TR states, because it is produced for the completion of federal legislative mandates, its use by people without clinical training can lead to inappropriate application of its contents. Appropriate use of the diagnostic criteria is said to require extensive clinical training, and its contents “cannot simply be applied in a cookbook fashion”. The APA notes diagnostic labels are primarily for use as a “convenient shorthand” among professionals. The DSM advises laypersons should consult the DSM only to obtain information, not to make diagnoses, and people who may have a mental disorder should be referred to psychological counseling or treatment. Further, a shared diagnosis or label may have different causes or require different treatments; for this reason the DSM contains no information regarding treatment or cause. The range of the DSM represents an extensive scope of psychiatric and psychological issues or conditions, and it is not exclusive to what may be considered “illnesses”.

Link
But hey? who reads that part of the manual :roll: (page XXXII of the DSM IV-TR according to Google Books (link - searchword cookbook)

The part set in cursive is something I would like to add to this discussion in terms of defining to a label, because of the general assumption that you are "ill" because you have (a) diagnostic label(s).

Being confined to a label is an other story, mainly because you do that to yourself or let others do that to you - yes, you can take charge in this.

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes


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